News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow multiline commits. Parent comment

Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by masklinn on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:17AM (#23768787)
I'd just C-x C-e and open the command line buffer in an editor to work on it there.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by caymanjim on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:38AM (#23769257)
This isn't enabled by default. You have to configure zsh with some optional features. I found this on Stack Overflow:

    autoload -z edit-command-line
    zle -N edit-command-line
    bindkey "^X^E" edit-command-line
[1] https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6620/how-to-edit-co...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by LukeShu on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @11:41AM (#23770972)
> This isn't enabled by default.

It is in Bash.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by imglorp on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:24AM (#23768829)
Oh man nice tip. I've been using bash for 30 years and never noticed that binding.

    "\C-x\C-e": edit-and-execute-command
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by atsaloli on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:32AM (#23769218)
That's right. If anyone wants to check their bindings, use:

    bind -p
or

    bind -P
For example:

    $ bind -P |grep execute
    edit-and-execute-command can be found on "\C-x\C-e".
    $
The "bind" shell built-in is detailed in the SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS section of the "bash" manual.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by simias on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:21AM (#23768818)
C-x C-e doesn't do anything in my configuration but beyond that I find that editing long freeform text on the command line gets annoying fast if only because of the careful escaping you have to do, especially for nested quotes.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by masklinn on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:34AM (#23768886)
In zsh (and bash I think) it opens the entire line in a buffer, making it easy to edit it in ways which wouldn't really work well at the shell.

> beyond that I find that editing long freeform text on the command line gets annoying fast if only because of the careful escaping you have to do, especially for nested quotes.

Oh I agree. Here I'd suggest it for the rare case where I was expecting to write a simple commit message and end up needing a much longer one, though usually I'd just create the commit and immediately "amend" into a proper text editor (and most of the time I use a text editor directly, because rare are the commits where the short desc is sufficient).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by fphilipe on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @07:45AM (#23768938)
Sure, but how would you format your message so the lines aren't longer than 80 chars? I guess you can edit the command to read from STDIN, but that sounds much more cumbersome than passing -e:

    git commit -F- <<EOF
    Fix issue

    Hello world...
    EOF
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by masklinn on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:06AM (#23769066)
> Sure, but how would you format your message so the lines aren't longer than 80 chars?

Put linebreaks and fill-paragraph for the later lines? You can put linebreaks in quoted shell strings, so once it's in an editor buffer there's no issue with that.

> I guess you can edit the command to read from STDIN

The use case here is "I've already started writing a commit message inline, I now realise I need more room, I don't want to bother copy/pasting stuff around".

If I know from the start that I will need more than just a shortdesc, I'll obviously be crafting the message in my editor in the first place.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Git commit accepts several message flags (-m) to allow mu... by u801e on Wednesday July 08, 2020 @08:34PM (#23775815)
Maybe something like

  fold -c -s -w 80 | git commit -F - <<EOF
  Fix issue

  Hello world...
  EOF
[ Parent | on HN ]